Stationed outside 10 different stash houses and heroin mills, investigators from a multi-agency task force were playing a game of hurry up and wait. For three days, they watched as a drug ring police say was powerful enough to run heroin throughout the Northeast went through its daily routine.

Drug money and dealers were ferried around Paterson by men who worked as cab drivers by day and criminals by night, authorities said. Men and women came and went from stash houses throughout the city, spending hours cutting and bagging millions of dollars of heroin. Sometimes, they’d take a break, stepping out to smoke cigarettes in surgical masks and aprons, authorities said.

But the alleged mastermind, 36-year-old Segundo Garcia, was nowhere to be found. Fearing he might flee the country, police swooped in on Nov. 13, arresting Garcia and 14 others and confiscating a cache of heroin with a street value of $1 million. Police said that for Garcia’s organization, that represented only a week’s supply.

Attorney General Jeffrey Chiesa announced the results of "Operation Dismay" today. The six-month probe tore down a massive drug ring that allegedly supplied heroin to high-level drug distributors in New York City, northern New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C., Chiesa said.

"They were not, for the most part, selling directly to street-level dealers," he said. "The evidence seized indicates this was a high-volume operation."

The takedown came as the state battles an ongoing opioid boom that has seen young pill addicts turn to heroin once they lose access to prescription medication. The number of New Jerseyans between the ages of 18 and 25 admitted to treatment for heroin addiction rose by 40 percent over the past decade, records show.

Garcia’s crew allegedly imported "powder white" Colombian heroin through networks once used by cartels to funnel cocaine into the Northeast, said Brian Crowell, the Special Agent in Charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s New York office.

Authorities would not say if Garcia’s ring was connected to a cartel, nor would they not identify which drug organizations they supplied, citing the ongoing investigation.

New Jersey is home to some of the purest heroin in the country, and with a dense population and a sprawling highway system, the Northeast is a hot spot for heroin distribution, Crowell said.

"The demand is here," he said. "We have the network between the airports and the seaports and the highways connecting to New England, and south to Washington, and west to Pittsburgh, which are the transportation networks these guys were using."

Authorities fear Garcia’s organization had been operating long before they discovered it.

"Based on what our investigation uncovered, it wasn’t a start-up operation," said Stephen Taylor, the director of the state Division of Criminal Justice. "It was something that had been an ongoing concern."

Garcia, a once-convicted drug dealer who was deported then snuck back into the United States, faces life in prison if convicted of leading the drug ring. The people below him in the organization face various drug and conspiracy offenses.

Officials praised Chiesa’s actions today as an important step to curbing New Jersey’s heroin crisis.

"Hearing from parents who have lost their children and those trying to save their children from drug addiction, we know first-hand the important role law enforcement plays in the fight against the state’s growing heroin epidemic," said John Hulick, head of the Governor’s Council on Alcohol and Drug Abuse.